Book your holiday travel now – not in two weeks

Why this is not the year to procrastinate buying plane tickets

Thanksgiving may still be two-and-a-half months away, but now’s the time to purchase airfare for that annual trek to Grandmother’s house—and to pick up those tickets for Christmas and New Year’s Eve while you’re at it.

“If you wait any longer you’re really throwing the dice and it probably won’t work out for you,” says Jeff Klee, chief executive of CheapAir.com. “If you’re traveling for Thanksgiving or Christmas, it’s more important than ever to book far in advance and start the process of checking fares far in advance.”

Anyone bold enough to fly over the holidays knows that airports and flights can be a whirlwind of frenzied travelers, many with cranky companions and kids, all navigating overcrowded gates and planes. Airlines keep the same number of planes in the air over the holidays as they do in the off-season. The only difference is that there are substantially more people flying during those prime times, which unbalances the supply and demand scales.

So expect higher prices—many airlines charge a premium on most-favored days, like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or the Sunday after—and fewer choices of seats and routes. It doesn’t help that there is about 20% less inventory—routes, planes, seats—than there was three years ago.

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“Almost every flight to anywhere is full,” Klee says. “More full flights means higher fares and bigger crowds. It will be just as bad this year as it was last year.” CheapAir has been tracking holiday airfare pricing since May, when they were considerably less pricey. After dipping two weeks ago, the price trend has been steadily rising.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking your trip to a smaller city will help you either. You may be going to Buffalo, N.Y., but your route could through major hubs like Chicago or Los Angeles, which will be fully booked.

Remember too that what you pay for your ticket is not what you pay for the trip. Ancillary fees mean big bucks to the airlines, which reported a staggering $27.1 billion in revenue on everything outside of tickets (including commission-based products and advertising sold by the airlines), more than double the $13.47 billion reported in 2009, according to marketing consultants IdeaWorks Co.

If you want to bring bags along, that will cost you at least $25 and as much as $210 if you’ve got three bags, as stated on Airfarewatchdog.com’s airline-fees list. Don’t want to be stuck in the middle seat between two linebackers? Ante up another $4 to $100 for the choice window and aisle seats. Double that if you want extra legroom—and consider if you don’t, you could end up in the back of the plane where legroom has been squeezed to make room for the spare space up front.

And then there’s the costs of when and how you pay. You may want to pony up for those extras online a day ahead of travel.

“More and more airlines are starting to give you a little bit of a discount if you pay in advance—or charge you more if you don’t pay in advance,” Klee says. “Call it a discount or a penalty.”

The key in any air travel itinerary is flexibility. Some days are simply price gougers to fly because so many more people are traveling. The rule of thumb for economical seats is to fly on Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday. Choose a Friday or Sunday and realize that you will be opening your wallet much farther.

The rules change for the holidays, depending on what day of the week the big days fall. Thanksgiving, of course, is always on a Thursday, so you’re better off looking to fly on the Monday or Tuesday before, or even on Thanksgiving itself, to find less costly seats. Traditionally the busiest and priciest day of the year to fly is that Sunday after the food fest.

Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year and it’s likely students of all ages will have the entire week off, meaning that flying on Friday, Dec. 20, might be something you want to avoid. Ditto for taking to the skies on the Sunday after Christmas, Dec. 29, and the Sunday after New Year’s, Jan. 5. Travel early morning on Jan. 1 if you’re looking for a deal, according to CheapAir.com’s Christmas flying calendar.

There is a sunny side to all this traveling gloom: The best time to take a trip to Europe or Asia is Thanksgiving week, according to Tom Parsons, chief executive of Bestfares.com.

“You can find packages at four-star hotels in Europe for $500, $600 and even $700 cheaper than what you paid during the summer,” he says. Why? Because Thanksgiving is an American holiday when no one’s flying to Europe for business and Europeans aren’t flying to the U.S. because it’s so expensive once they’re here.

One of his favorite picks for this year is what he calls the “double whammy of turkey”: A round-trip flight from New York to Istanbul for $539.

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